How many UX designers does it take to NOT spoil a design?

Question

Is there a rule of thumb for how many UX designers should be working together on a project? Factoring in things like the size of the project (e.g. number of functions/screens), timeline of the project, complexity of the user interaction.

I would like to think that there should be at least one UX designer per project team, but two would be even better. It might also depend on where the strengths/weaknesses of each UX designer is. Theoretically one would think that multiple UX designers produce better results than a single UX designer, yet there are also issues such as too many people double handling things, or having different opinions about style and design directions (see Apollo syndrome.

I would like to know if there has been studies to identify problems when UX designers work by themselves or with other people?

UPDATE: Now that I have actually worked in a few different projects with other UX designers, I feel like I should provide an update to this question (with my own answer) now that I have a different perspective on this topic.

Answer 1

They say that "too many cooks spoil the soup" and while there's some truth to that, I think the proper saying is actually "too many opinionated people that think they are cooks spoil the soup" is more appropriate. So, yes, having too many uninformed opinions can be a bad thing (design by committee) but having multiple informed opinions isn't necessarily bad, and is often good.

Generally speaking, I think the more skilled minds you have tackling a problem up front, the quicker the list of solutions can be narrowed and refined.

At some point, however, there are benefits to sticking with a 'single vision' to refine things near the end. That's typically when you get into the detailed UI design. A simple example would be that you want one designer designing all the icons, rather than 10, as you want the icons to share a common aesthetic quality.

In the end, though, it's more about personalities than numbers. If you have the right personalities who enjoy the war-room environment where everyone is sharing a whiteboard, I think there's a lot to be gained by tag-teaming projects.

Answer 2

I would split 'UX Designer' into two distinct roles - namely 'UX' and 'Design'.

UX

For the UX part, a good team works better than someone alone. This is especially important for ideation and brainstorming where you want many opinions. A solo person will often find this very difficult.

Some teams work well with 10 people, while others find that 2 is too many. A good team is largely about balance, where one person's strengths balance another person's weaknesses. You need to realise that every strength a person has results in a weakness as well, so the balance is important. I have found Belbin Team Roles fairly useful here in understanding the various aspects, but there are many useful methods outside of this.

Some argue that it's about avoiding opinionated people, but I would disagree. Rational opinionated people who will give ideas and back them up with information that the rest of the team can evaluate, are very useful.

Design

Once the UX framework is worked out, I prefer there to be a single designer (or for large projects a small design team). For the design, consistency of a vision matters, and it is less about people throwing ideas around, and more about functional art. This makes it more of a solo task.

Answer 3

To answer the question - can too many UX designers spoil a design - the answer is of course, they can, but they don't have to.

Any UX designer capable of understanding the needs of the user and applying the business rules to a project, while collaborating with everyone involved, but who then screws things up due to an inability to work with someone right next to them is simply not doing their job - for themselves, for their client or company, or for UX as a whole.

Think of it like combining electrical phases. You get two people out of phase with each other - they cancel themselves out. You get two people in phase with each other - they double their effectiveness.

However, due to the nature of the field of UX, and it's need to consider end users, then UX designers are more likely to be in phase with each other than some other members or roles within a group.

Whenever possible, I like to bring up Damien Newman's squiggle of the design process which indicates how the design process starts off in a messy research phase, narrows through the design prototype phase and settles down to an almost flat line as a design solution is reached.

Multiple UX designers have more scope for exploring more of that huge research space, and will have more diverse input as a result, but this should still all come together to a shared vision, not just with each other, but with the whole team and with all stakeholders.

And it's exactly because of the whole collaborative effort that multiple UX designers should be able to enhance a design rather than spoil it - because they are not doing it for themselves.

Answer 4

Usually, I would say one senior level UXD and one or two junior (not necessarily entry level, but junior than the senior level) UXDs will be a good start for the team. In addition to the UXDs, it is always nice to have Visual Designers to help with proper polished graphics.

The project size I have in mind is a single small/mid-size website or a small mobile application. If the scope of the project is bigger, you split up the scope into smaller parts, hand off each part to one above mentioned team and have a person (UXD?) co-ordinate the higher level continuity across the teams.

Answer 5

There is never just one and only good way of doing things, so different visions may clash. If you adapt them partially, the final result may be inconsistent and disastrous. The only good model of doing it is structuring these UX designers so that there is one UX team leader.

Answer 6

I would say it will be much easier to get solid and complete result having one person responsible. Some decisions can be easily treated as very subjective, so sometimes you need balls to take responsibility and make the final decision.

Naturally, skilled professionals will definitely make their way through any problems, but usually projects with clear responsibility list produce better results.

Disclaimer: this is my very subjective position.

Answer 7

Why don't we look at an example: this very site. There is a "team" of several hundred UX designers; and each question can be thought of as an individual design challenge.

So do you think it helps that we have multiplicity of opinions, or we'd be better off if every question was answered by just one guy (even if it was @JohnGB)?

Answer 8

Normally I wouldn't answer my own question, but having asked this question before I had the experience and now having gained some of the experience required to answer the question I thought I'd give it a shot.

I believe that if you look at the tasks involved in UX at a conceptual level, you can divide them into a couple of different parts, and there are components which are good to do as a team, and components that are best done as individuals:

• Conceptualization, ideation (the creative thinking part): I think that this is where the advantage of having a team (i.e. more than one person) really helps, because it gives you a much broader perspective and experience pool to draw from.
• Implementation: provided that the work can be divided into logical chunks and that there is a very good standard + process in place, I don't mind if this is done in a team because it can cut down the time required to 'churn' out stuff. However, I have seldom seen this part managed well enough, so generally it is best done by a single person. However, you then run the risk of the person being metaphorically 'hit by a bus' (probably because they are overworked when in a large project). So in a badly managed project, it actually doesn't matter how many cooks are involved, the broth is always going to get spoilt.
• Review: since you can't do peer review without peers, this is another part that is best done when you have a time. However, there is still benefit in one being able to review and critique their own work, the same way a programmer might do unit testing on their own code.
• Test: I think this type of work has the same nature as doing reviews, in that having more than one person helps a lot in testing (e.g. someone talking or observing while the other person takes notes), but it shouldn't stop you from doing it alone or managing it differently if you don't get other help (not a reason/excuse to skip).

And in a large team where everyone is busy doing one or more of these activities, you generally need someone to manage the schedule and workload to make sure everyone is being productive and there is good communication.

So my 'formula' for the minimum number of UX designers required goes something like this:

+1 UX resource for every project that needs to be worked on concurrently

+1 UX resource for each type of task that needs to be worked on currently

+1 UX resource once you reach over multiples of three concurrent tasks

+1 UX resource once you reach over multiples of three projects

So for example, if a company has two different projects going on at the same time, and that each project is doing implementation and testing at the same time, I would allocate 2 people (one for each project) and then add one extra person to each of those projects (one for each concurrent task) to arrive at a total of 4 people. If suddenly they pick up another project then I would need to add one more resource because I have hit a multiple of three projects in total.